


Somebody, Hurt Me Too Deep

by Polomonkey



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Dark, Dehumanization, Hopeful Ending, Human Experimentation, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4933987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polomonkey/pseuds/Polomonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo strikes a deal with Hobb. His body for his siblings' lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody, Hurt Me Too Deep

**Author's Note:**

> For my hurt/comfort bingo square 'rape/non-con'. The rape is non-explicit but obviously still upsetting.
> 
> I liked Humans but I had mixed feelings about the way they handled consent and bodily autonomy in the show. This fic is sort of an exploration of that.

They power his siblings down, lift their inert bodies and load them into the van like shopfront mannequins. Leo howls with rage to see it, fighting against the arms wrapped around him until they wrestle him to the floor. He turns his head to catch a glimpse of Toby’s wide, terrified eyes, Mattie’s mouth forming a perfect o of shock; and then there’s the sting of the needle in his neck. He redoubles his efforts to shake his attacker off, but he can already feel himself weakening. He’s lifted into someone’s arms, carried from the house to the waiting van, Sophie’s screams echoing in his ears.

Beatrice is nowhere to be seen.

 

***

 

He wakes to find someone taking off his clothes. He panics immediately, thrashing around as much as he can, but he’s so weak from the drugs he can barely lift his head. The person touching him doesn’t break their stride, stripping him briskly. He manages to coordinate his loose tongue to form a sound of protest when they reach his boxers, but his anguish goes unheeded and they tug them off anyway.

“He looks human enough down there,” a voice says above him and there’s a responding laugh.

Leo tries to spit an insult but all that comes out is a groan.

Someone presses their fingers into the wound in his side, not gently.

“Careful,” comes a new voice, and Hobb walks into Leo’s view. “We need him in one piece.”

“It looks infected,” a female voice says.

“Treat it. Then put him with the others.”

At the mention of his siblings, Leo tries to speak again but his tongue won’t cooperate.

He makes a gargling noise and Hobb rests a hand on his bare leg.

“Shhh Leo, shhh. Don’t fight us.” 

Another needle is sliding into the crook of his arm and the corresponding darkness is almost immediate.

The last thing he hears before he blacks out is Hobb’s sad sigh.

“You can’t win.” 

 

***

 

He can speak the next time he sees Hobb, not that it does any good. Hobb tells him they need to run some tests on him. Hobb tells him that his rights are a grey area; that they can keep him here as long as they want. 

Hobb tells him that they’ll kill his siblings.

He doesn’t return for nearly a day, leaving Leo to stew over the things he’s said. When he does, he has a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“Some good news for you, Leo. We’ve had a bit of outside pressure. Those loyal Hawkins again. The lawyers think we’ll be pushing it to keep you here for much longer without just cause.”

Leo waits for the catch. There’s nothing about Hobb’s demeanour that suggests his plans have been scuppered in any way.

“So I brought this. It’s for you to sign. It states that you consent to stay at the facility and submit to the tests we want to run, for as long as it takes.”

Hobb smiles, proffering the papers.

“Why would I sign that?” Leo says.

Hobb sighs.

“Well, unfortunately, the law still doesn’t apply to your little Synth friends. So I’m afraid they’re still being recycled. Pretty much the second after you walk out that door. Unless…”

Unless he signs. Leo doesn’t need it spelled out. He also doesn’t need to think twice.

“What happens to them if I do?” he says quietly.

“Well, you understand I can’t just let them go. They know just a tad too much. But there’s a house not far from here that they could share. They’d be under guard, but free to roam as they’d like. Left to their own devices. Alive. You could guarantee that.”

 _They could escape_ , Leo thinks. _Even from armed guards. Niska’s clever enough. Fred’s resourceful enough. They could get away if I… if I…_

“If I sign my body over to you,” he says, his own voice sounding dim and far away.

His body. He’s not stupid. He knows what it means when Hobb looks at him in that certain way, still remembers the feel of Hobb’s hand on his bare leg.

Hobb doesn’t just want to run his tests, he wants all of him. But what choice does he have? His siblings will die without him. What’s his life compared to that?

“Your body,” Hobb says musingly. “But it is your body Leo? Or just your mind trapped inside a Synth’s vessel? Where does the human end and the machine begin?”

“Does it make a difference?” Leo says.

Then he signs without waiting for an answer, signs before he can change his mind.

Hobb smiles, generous in victory.

“I’ll go and prepare them for release.”

He gathers the papers in his hand, thumbs at the tears trickling from Leo’s eyes.

“Don’t cry, Leo. It’s all for the good of science. Try to take comfort in that.”

 

***

 

Leo doesn’t get to say goodbye to his sisters and brothers. But Hobb lets him watch them on a monitor for ten minutes every day, a live feed he has running from the house. 

Niska figures out how to fix Max, a few days into living there. It’s the sole thing that keeps Leo going. He usually spends his allotted ten minutes staring at Max, the way he lopes around the house in that heartbreakingly familiar way. 

Sometimes his ten minutes coincides with one of them crying though, and he hates that. He shuts his eyes then, and waits for Hobb to come and turn the monitor off.

The rest of the day is spent in the lab. 

They never give him his clothes back. He wears the hospital gown day and night. He’s always cold.

Most of the tests they do seem designed to gauge how much stimuli he can take, how much pressure or pain he can be submitted to before he powers down. They fix the hole in his side but then they hurt him again; inject him with hallucinogens, expose him to infections, break one of his fingers to see how fast it heals.

He can handle the pain, just about. He can even handle the cold baths and the bright lights and the music played at top volume for hours on end.

What he can’t handle is the way they talk about him. Over his head like he’s not even there, like they’re experimenting on an inanimate object. Sticking instruments and wires inside him like he’s a power outlet; prodding and poking him like a piece of meat. Cleaning his face briskly with a dry wipe when he cries, as though the tears are some kind of involuntary physical reaction.

And he’s not Leo anymore. They call him “Synth” or “robot” or “dolly”. Hobb’s the only one who still uses his name.

At night they gag him, strap him to a bed in a cell, and turn the lights off. The lights don’t come on again till morning, but that doesn’t mean he has no visitors. Hobb comes almost every single night.

It’s a specific kind of horror, this nightly undoing. He’s not expected to participate, not expected to do anything but just lie there, limp in his restraints, breath coming in quiet, desperate pants behind the gag. It’s like he’s a mannequin, like he’s a sex doll.

It’s like he’s a Synth. And Hobb is his owner, and he’s trying out the 18+ options. And Leo can’t say no, can't speak at all, can’t exert any control over his own body. There is no consent when it comes to Synths. There’s only what the owner wants and what the owner gets.

If he could shut off his feelings, he would. If he could power down his brain, he would. If he could disable his memory, that ceaseless and relentless recorder of everything that’s ever happened to him, he would.

But he can’t. He can’t destroy his human side. He can’t recode his machine side. He can’t do anything.

So mostly he spends his nights thinking about Niska, and how he left her in that brothel to be raped by strangers, for the good of the cause. And he wonders if this is his punishment. He wonders if he’s getting exactly what he deserves.

 

***

 

It’s six weeks before the rescue comes, or at least he thinks it’s six weeks. He lost track a long time ago in here. Every day bleeds into the next, and he never sees the sunlight. He’s slipping away slowly, quietly, leaving another part of himself behind every day in the lab and every night in his cell. It doesn’t feel like there’s much of him left to rescue.

But rescue him they do, his beautiful, brave siblings; so much sharper with their plans and their strategy than any of the humans who work here. They break open his cell and Max carries him to the car, and his brother still smells like home, after all this time.

Even though there is no home, anymore, never was. Leo doesn’t belong anywhere. He’s a hybrid, a monster, and now he’s as ruined on the inside as he is on the outside. He turns away from the gentle hands petting his hair, from the soft voices telling him it’ll be alright. He doesn’t say a word, even once they reach the safe house, even when they bundle him up in bed and feed him soup and treat the wounds the lab techs left behind.

_Where does the human end and the machine begin?_

It doesn’t make a difference. Both are shattered beyond repair. Leo’s shattered beyond repair.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Redemption in the next part, I absolutely promise...


End file.
